CHINA: Rural China is still poor and migrant workers are grossly exploited, writes Clifford Coonan in Beijing
The plight of millions of migrant workers, who make the products driving China's economic miracle and who build the gleaming skyscrapers of the new cities, is getting worse despite government efforts to bridge a yawning income gap.
About 800 million of China's 1.3 billion people live in the countryside; in the past 20 years some 140 million have came to the cities for low-paying jobs on building sites or in factories and restaurants.
At this year's annual parliament, the National People's Congress, the government launched a new plan aimed at narrowing the potentially destabilising income gap between rural and urban China, building what it calls "a new socialist countryside".
But this has failed to translate into progress for many migrant workers in the cities, a new report from China's State Council, or cabinet, has shown.
Song Jun (30) comes from Henan province and has worked on the building sites of Beijing for three years. He earns €70 a month and hasn't had a pay increase since he came to the capital, even though inflation makes Beijing an expensive place. His train ticket home at spring festival costs €20, more than a week's wages.
Nearly 40 per cent of farmers- turned-labourers earn an average monthly wage of about €50-€80, according to a recent survey.
The move to the cities has an air of inevitability about it.
Government figures show the number of people living in China's cities rose from 170 million to 540 million between 1978 and 2004. China now has 49 cities with a population of more than one million. The government reckons China's urban-rural income gap is set to worsen again this year, despite efforts to stimulate the countryside with major investment.
"The slower increase of wages for migrant workers, to a large extent, hinders rural families' income growth," said Ma Xiaohe, deputy director of the Academy of Macroeconomic Research with the National Development and Reform Commission.
This means China will continue to suffer a large income disparity between rural and urban areas this year, according to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
Liu Kaiming, executive director of the Institute of Contemporary Observation, a non-government organisation focused on migrant workers in the southern boomtown of Shenzhen, said government policy and, increasingly, a labour shortage in big cities had improved the situation a bit.
"But there is still a lack of social support to help development, no social security, and it's difficult for families to be together in these cities," said Liu, "and it is very difficult for children to go to school in the city."
While many schools do not charge fees, they do ask for a "donation" or "temporary school fees", which can be €1,200 a year or more. This means that for people like Song, who has two children at primary school, education is the main expenditure.
As it is for Chen Dewu (46) from the western province of Sichuan, who has been working as a cleaner in Beijing for three years. He is on €60 a month but at least it is regular.
His wife works as a housekeeper, also earning €60 a month and they live in a room of about seven square metres which costs €20 a month.
Their elder girl is in senior high school in their home town, and their little girl is studying in primary school in Beijing.
"We are pinching and scraping to save some money, but the fact is the expense for my girls in school just eats up almost all our incomes," Chan said.
The rural poor who come to the cities seeking work lack any kind of representation, because independent trade unions are banned in China and organising strikes can lead to imprisonment.
They are often shabbily treated and sometimes they are not paid at all - they are owed billions in unpaid salaries.
The government acknowledges the plight of migrant workers and has made efforts to improve their lot by eliminating restrictions on companies employing migrant workers, opening up public job agencies and providing information and training, as well as trying to pressurise bosses to pay on time.
There are cases of workers attacking their managers over unpaid wages, even killing them.
The ruling Communist Party is wary of the potentially destabilising effect of an army of angry migrant workers. There were 87,000 serious protests last year.
Sun Xiaoli (27) had never been to Beijing before she came to work in a Beijing canteen this year from her small country village, Longlin near Xi'an in Shaanxi province.
She cleans the tables and floors, collects the dishes after dinner and does other dishwashing work. She earns €50 a month for a 14-hour day.
Her husband works as a cook in the university, but they cannot afford to have their three-year- old son living with them in Beijing. He lives with his grandmother back home.